LH, I'm glad you're beginning to thaw. Dang, I wish I'd known. Dang. I really wish I'd known. As far as what I was thinking that night, I don't remember specifically; I just remember the feeling of incredible caution shutting me up, shutting me down, being cornered... temporarily paralyzed after having taken more than enough crap that week that actually had nothing to do with me-- and I knew you saw some of that and if you recall I shared some of the reasons for it then. As far as the thoughts themselves-- we could talk all night about such things but I suspect that the best understanding we'd reach would be just being aware of one another as we were at Moosewood. Watching each other's wheels turn. It's probably a higher state of being than all the talking would be. Don't you think?

Sorcha-- Actually I am in great shape, BesBud, if a bit ragged around the edges. It's walking around numb and unaware that reads as death to me. Much better to work through stuff. I may not be able to help having had bad things happen to me in the past, and having feelings left over to deal with, but I don't have to keep myself stuck in them. It always cracks me up to see people fidgeting about my being tactless, or whatever-- since I can look back over the last 5, 10, 20, 30 years or more, and see that I am actually getting more and more tactful all the time! (And we had a great unexpected jam with strangers this afternoon as a reward of sorts for the stuff that had been worked through-- I'd really like to write about THAT.)

LH, Sorch-- I think it boils down to one's view of the human bean. If one views the human bean at any one point in its life and applies evaluation and judgement based just on that view, we all look pretty silly, and I think pretty scary and even maybe worthless. But if we choose the view that everyone has been in one place and is going in some direction from there, a lot of things that otherwise seem completely nonsensical suddenly make sense. The question is, do you see LIFE in PROCESS or not, because I think if you don't you have a dead view.

When we have ALL the information available, it usually turns out that no matter what the momentary appearance, people are very, very busily engaged in doing the best they can at any given moment. And trying to do even better than that, for the sake of continuing to move forward. (I do a pretty good job of remembering that about people close to me, and I know it's something they count on me for, but it's harder for me with people who aren't as close. I'm sure I need to work on it. It will probably turn out that I HAVE been working on just that.)

People who feel safe talking about such things will generally make that real easy to see. LH feels a certain degree of safety with me, for example, for a variety of reasons, so he speaks to me openly, and I feel the same about him, so I am open with him. My friendships are limited to people who deal on that level. People who don't want to deal on that level... I actually do a lot in the world to help people who are not my friends, but here? At the Mudcat? I'm taking Spaw's wonderful advice. Use this as a place to let go, build myself up, etc. Know what? To me that means, "What You See Is What You Get." I know who my friends are, and they know who they are, and the rest? It'll have to take care of itself. I have stuff to do.

Now this thread is not supposed to be about ME, it's supposed to be about what YOU all think about YOUR lives-- read the opening post! Let's move ON.

~Susan